The New Solar System

J. Kelly Beatty, Carolyn Collins Petersen + Andrew Chaikin (editors)

Our understanding of the solar system has advanced a long way since I last
delved into the subject more than a decade ago. The New Solar System
is a comprehensive overview of current knowledge, aimed at the educated
non-specialist (this fourth edition is expanded and rewritten; the editors
confidently predict a fifth will soon be needed). It contains twenty
eight chapters by experts, but is a genuine book rather than an ad hoc
collection, carefully edited to avoid redundancy and maintain consistency.
At least acquaintance with basic general physics and chemistry is
assumed, but mathematical and physical detail is avoided: notably, there
is hardly an equation to be seen, with diagrams and figures used instead.
Along with photographs, computer generated images, and artwork, these
are superbly integrated into the text, never threatening, despite their
splendour, to reduce The New Solar System to a picture book.

The New Solar System begins with a history of the exploration of
the solar system, outlining the current extent of our knowledge and
the prospects for future exploration, and a chapter on its origin.
It closes with chapters on the possibilities for life elsewhere in
the solar system and on the search for other planetary systems and
what they teach us about our own. In between, the components of
the solar system are systematically covered. There are the obvious
chapters on the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, the Moon, and Mars, along
with four comparative chapters on the atmospheres and interiors of the
terrestrial and giant planets. There are three chapters on Jupiter's
Galilean satellites, one on Titan, and one on Trito, Pluto, and Charon.
Other chapters cover mid-size icy satellites, "small worlds" generally,
comets, meteorites, asteroids, and cometary reservoirs. And there are
chapters on magnetospheres and interplanetary space, on collisions,
and on planetary rings.

The contributors don't just describe these bodies, however. They document
their histories and the processes that have created, moulded, and placed
them, on all time scales from solar system-wide orbital dynamics and
geological processes to chemical processes and collisions. And along
the way they explain the basic science behind it all. The result is a
volume that brings to life both the unique features of particular bodies
and the fundamentals of planetary science.